Australia Part 2

After our interesting night in Coober Pedy, we headed for Adelaide.

Annika, me, Kate

Not the most ideal birthday for Kate driving all day through a whole lot of nothing-ness, and really not very attractive nothing-ness either. We have seen lots of different landscapes as we drove, but the drive through South Australia was not very pretty. We spent one night in Adelaide, checking out the city (which I liked despite Kate's brainwashing against it!) and then the next night in the Barossa Valley, an hour or so outside the city, visiting wineries.

This was our first winery, we just happened to stop as we were driving - it was beautiful - lots of nice wine and a tasting platter of crackers, cheese, etc.

We visited a few more that afternoon, Cockatoo Ridge being the best stop - they were having a sale, we got 12 bottles for $30, and nice wine too! That night we stayed in hotel/pub in the town, but since we had our own wine, we went to the grocery store and got more crackers, veggies, and dips and had yet another picnic on the balcony.

The next morning (after tea in Zinfandel teashop), we stopped at Jacob's Creek, just because it is one I knew.

Then we were back on the move. We stopped in Mt Gambier at the Blue Lake - it was windy, but so pretty, we still wanted to go swimming (but you can't).
And made a strange stop at a sink hole, huge hole in the ground converted into gardens. We stayed in Warrnambool that night, checking out where Kate's sister goes to "uni", but it is still summer break, so she is still back at home in Melbourne.

The next day, now Friday, we (well Kate) drove along the Great Ocean Road. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ocean_Road . We made lots of photo stops, all gorgeous views of the ocean, cliffs, rocks. A windy drive, but beautiful. We had lunch in Apollo Bay, where Kate spent summers as a kid. It would have been a nice place to stay, really nice beaches, and we were lucky that it seemed to stop raining whenever we got out of the car.

Kate on the top of the lookout onto Apollo Bay.

We got into Melbourne Friday night around 6:30, after being stuck in the first traffic we had seen the whole trip. Kate's parents put on a nice birthday dinner for her, so we got to spend time with her family. I lived with her sister Jess in London for 6 months and had met her parents and other sister in London when they came to visit last year. But also got to meet her brother, sister-in-law, 2 yr old niece and 4 week old nephew - not surprisingly I held the baby as long as I could!

We spent 5 nights in Melbourne, seeing the city and also relaxing. It was so nice not to have to pack up our backpacks every morning. Saturday night we went out in the city with a few other friends from London who have moved back to Melbourne. Of course, we also found an afternoon to spend visiting the Yarra Valley wineries, before catching flights to Tasmania on Wednesday.